Diet Details

I wanted to write about what interesting things I've run across in re the low carb - high fat diet.

Back a few months ago it was my view of how digestion works is that we have little miners in us and that they would chase down the molecules and nutrients that we need.  For example we have to eat some iron, but we didn't need to eat liver.  These little guys would store and use what was required and pass on the rest.

Some of that is correct, but I was wrong on several fronts.  So let me lay out a simplified view of the actual symptom.  It looks like researchers have nailed all the details down to inter-cellular levels and it seems to be quite reliable.  I'm comfortable with accepting this view as being correct.

Food comes in a limited number of forms.  We have the fats, the carbs, and protean.  The body handles them separately.  I'll add fiber to that too as a separate category.

So fats have their own tube and get passed down to the colon and there you get some bile being added.  There are a lot of vitamins in fat and this is where the get absorbed.   Bile is not released in the absence of fat intake and if you take vitamin D3 for example, you have to take it with some fat or it won't get absorbed.  There are a lot of good vitamins in animal fat; a lot of them on the required list.

Proteins and fibers go through the stomach and get an acid bath and then into the small intestine.  Stuff gets extracted from there and then fiber is passed on to the large intestine.  The colon uses more of a fermentation process to deal with fiber.  Interesting point that the researchers have made is that the human system is not optimized for fiber and vegetarian food.  The gorilla is.  Gorilla colons are ten times longer than a human's.  Note their large bellies!  Basically if you are vegan or something, you are not using your body as designed.

Now the most interesting item are the carbs.  They get processed by the liver and readily get into the blood stream.  The total amount of glucose in the entire blood stream is about a teaspoon's worth.  When more carbs hits the blood stream than that, insulin is released.  Insulin in quite a material and does a lot.  It's main job is storage.  If the glucose is not needed for immediately energy or for short term storage in the muscle, then is it converted to fat and stored in fat cells.  Note that you don't get more fat cells, they just change in size as they fill or empty.

The problem is if you have too much glucose running around.  The body will keep producing insulin.  If this goes on for too long then the body become insulin resistant.  And soon after that you get diabetes.  One of the effects of this is that various cells and the brain get starved for glucose, which is the energy source.  It is suggested that a fair amount of senior dementia is due to lack of glucose in brain cells, due to too much insulin.  The insulin damages some of the cellular mechanisms which then block the movement of glucose into the cells.  The cells are starved for energy. 

The standard treatment for diabetes has been a low fat, high carb diet and more insulin.  Because if there is too much blood sugar, then adding more sugar makes sense and the same for insulin!

There is a GP from the UK who was in practice for 25 years.  He had two problems, well, three I guess.  He was a product of traditional medical schools, he was a bit of a scientist, and he became diabetic.  But he was lucky in that he had a patient who "cured" herself of diabetes.  To his credit he didn't fall back on his training, which told him that there was nothing to be done about diabetes, it was a long downhill run and part of getting older.  He looked into it being a scientist.  He had never seen diabetic remission in his 25 years of practice. 

So what was the cure?  It was just eating very few carbs.  After his research into this patient, he adopted the diet himself.  His condition is under control unless he eats bananas.  By the way, he is a very amusing and likeable speaker and can be found on YouTube, his name is Dr. David Unwin, worth the watch.

What happens when the body is "starved" for glucose?  I did mention that glucose in cellular energy material and the brain needs a lot of it.  Well, the body being an impressive multifunctioning device will take the fat out of its stores and convert the fat back to glucose as needed.  So basically, no problem!  The fat storage system is so efficient that we all have energy for a long time just in the fatty material.  There has been some research in extreme athletes who are using a no carb diet.  Some of them have less than three percent body fat, they still have lots of energy ready to go. 

Finally if the brain needs more glucose, it will convert protean to glucose.  If there is no protean intake, then you start to lose lean body mass - think of those in starvation.

As I have adopted this diet, I'm down a bunch of weight, my waist is getting smaller, I'm no longer hungry, and I really don't miss the carbs.  Having the fat burning mechanism running, as energy is needed, it is pulled from the fat stores.  So I'm not looking for the next meal.  Also what I can eat is pretty good.  Cheese, nuts, meat, cream, salads, basically anything but sweets.  It is quite satisfying and then there is bacon!  I do miss a few things.  Barb made a peach cobbler the other day and I did have a couple of very small servings.  She did a nice job and it tasted real good...

That's a bit of a simplified view of digestion, there are YouTube resources if you are interested.  Look for Unwin and Phinney if you want to know more. 

I want to talk about how the standard American diet came about.  It's a sad big government moment that should scare us all.  It's not the only one and there will be more down the road.